North Yorkshire 2017

This is HMICFRS’ fourth PEEL (police effectiveness, efficiency and legitimacy) assessment of North Yorkshire Police. PEEL is designed to give the public information about how their local police force is performing in several important areas, in a way that is comparable both across England and Wales, and year on year. The assessment is updated throughout the year with our inspection findings and reports.

The extent to which the force is effective at keeping people safe and reducing crime is not yet graded.

The extent to which the force is efficient at keeping people safe and reducing crime requires improvement.

The extent to which the force is legitimate at keeping people safe and reducing crime is good.

The efficiency and legitimacy inspection findings are published below.

Effectiveness

How effective is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?

Efficiency

How efficient is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?

Last updated 09/11/2017

Requires improvement

North Yorkshire Police is judged to require improvement in the efficiency with which it keeps people safe and reduces crime. This is not consistent with last year’s assessment, when the force was assessed as good for efficiency overall. The force’s understanding of demand is judged to require improvement; it is judged to require improvement for its use of resources to manage demand; and it is assessed to require improvement for its planning for future demand.

North Yorkshire Police is judged to require improvement in how it understands the demand for its services. The force has a good understanding of current demand, gathering and analysing data from a variety of sources. It is enhancing this through a review of its response services to provide a more sophisticated understanding of how best to allocate its workforce according to demand. While the force is increasing its understanding of future demand, it could do more to understand its growing communities, such as eastern European communities, and how it needs to develop its policing services and skills for the future. It also needs to do more work to understand and reduce inefficient processes.

North Yorkshire Police has a good understanding of the skills and capability of its workforce and the skills and experience that it needs to maintain a skilled workforce. The force has plans to recruit and fill identified workforce gaps in the future. While it is seeking to enhance the way it works with other organisations, it does need to address the problem of the negative impact that working with some other organisations, such as the Yorkshire Ambulance Service, is having. This is increasing demand on police time. It also needs to improve how it implements its plans for the introduction of new technology as it has experienced significant delays in providing frontline staff with new ICT. Because of such delays, the force’s plans are not as advanced or innovative as in some other police forces. The force’s financial plans are aligned with its workforce plans and it has change plans designed to meet future public expectations. Despite having a good record of making savings, the force still has a significant financial challenge ahead to meet the predicted shortfall in its budget from 2019/20.

Legitimacy

How legitimate is the force at keeping people safe and reducing crime?

Last updated 12/12/2017

Good

North Yorkshire Police is judged to be good at how legitimately it keeps people safe and reduces crime. For the areas of legitimacy that we looked at this year, our overall judgment is the same as last year. The force is now judged to be requiring improvement in some aspects of how it treats the people it serves with fairness and respect. However, it is judged to be good at ensuring its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully, and is good at treating its workforce with fairness and respect.

North Yorkshire Police continues to be good in respect of the legitimacy with which it keeps people safe and reduces crime. However, the force requires improvement in some aspects of how it treats the people it serves with fairness and respect. The force expects high standards from its workforce and has values which are underpinned by the Code of Ethics. The force communicates those standards to both its workforce and the community of North Yorkshire. Although not all frontline officers and staff have received unconscious bias or effective communication skills training, most were able to articulate their understanding of unconscious bias and provide examples of when they had used effective communication. The force does not have robust processes in place to scrutinise its use of stop and search powers, which is a concern to HMICFRS. The force should also improve how it encourages external scrutiny and challenge, in order to improve the extent to which it treats the public with fairness and respect.

North Yorkshire Police continues to be good at ensuring that its workforce behaves ethically and lawfully. Senior leaders demonstrate and maintain the values expected of them. The force has maintained its commitment to developing an ethical culture by training officers in ethical decision making, and reviewing its decisions in consultation with the workforce and diverse groups. The force has clear and accessible information to make it easy for the public to make a complaint, and HMICFRS found that it keeps most complainants updated about the process of their complaint. We found that the force is good at both identifying and investigating allegations of discrimination.

HMICFRS found that the force works hard to ensure that it treats its officers and staff with fairness and respect. The force seeks challenge from the workforce, and has a commitment to understanding and addressing workforce concerns, including grievances. The force has undertaken more consultation and action to improve workforce wellbeing since the last inspection. Staff and supervisors generally feel supported by the provision for wellbeing. The force actively seeks to develop its workforce and improve performance through a new individual performance management process, which has generally been well accepted by staff. The force does not have a formal process to identify high potential in its workforce, and recognises that it could do more to identify and develop its future senior leaders.

Other inspections

How well has the force performed in our other inspections?

In addition to the three core PEEL pillars, HMICFRS carries out inspections of a wide range of policing activity throughout the year. Some of these are conducted alongside the PEEL inspections (for instance, our 2016 leadership assessment); others are joint inspections.

Findings from these inspections are published separately to the main PEEL reports, but are taken into account when producing the rounded assessment of each force's performance.

Police and crime plan priorities

North Yorkshire is one of the safest places in England, but we must always strive to improve.

My strategic priorities therefore seek to drive the improvement of outcomes across the board, especially in the protection of the most vulnerable in our society, customer service and primary prevention.

Read More

To achieve this we must ensure our frontline officers and staff have the best support and capability to undertake their duties, and we must more effectively collaborate with our partners to improve how we deliver services and generate efficiencies that can be reinvested elsewhere.

We will be focusing on providing an exceptional local service, using the whole policing family, and empowering communities to be more involved in achieving their own visions for their futures.

When something does go wrong, the public can expect an effective and compassionate customer service, with outstanding support services to help them cope and recover.